You've Heard It Once
by Quasi-Verbatim
Summary: "You've really done it now you know. You've finally screwed up so bad that Mom and Dad are going to send you away." AU Inspired by 'A Long Way Home' by meggannn


You've Heard It Once

When I was three I spilled a bowl of soup all over my older sister without even touching it. She'd been teasing me mercilessly all day about the new hair ties I'd gotten for my birthday, and I'd just about had enough, I remember liking the way she shrieked in surprise.

A few months later an older boy, a bender, was reaching down below the snow, bending up ice balls, and throwing them at the younger kids. When he'd hit my younger sister for the third time, I reached as far below the surface as I could, and pulled up the hardest ice I could find before chucking it at him, but what hit him wasn't ice; it was rock.

By the time I turned four I'd managed to burn through two pairs of boots and twice as many gloves.

It was on my fourth birthday that my parents told me what I was. It was also the day that they contacted the white lotus.

My parents told me not to bend anything but water in public. No one else knew what I was, but that didn't stop the rumors.

Everyone in our village was surprised and a bit suspicious that my parents, a weak bender and a non bender, had a child that managed to unlock their water bending at the tender age of three, but while rumors circulated, no one had any qualms about labeling me as a prodigy. Some of the other kids seemed jealous, but for the most part, people seemed proud to have me as part of their village.

When I started bending two other elements though, they seemed to feel something else entirely.

It didn't always affect me. I remember that most people weren't too happy that I was the avatar, but my parents were well liked and well respected in our village and they did their best to keep it from me.

The White Lotus didn't show up for nearly four months. They said that weather had held up their departure, but even with bad weather, we knew it shouldn't have taken that long.

The people of my village weren't stupid, the White Lotus showing up confirmed their suspicions.

Everyone in the village boarded their windows and stayed in their huts, some more curious faces peaking out only to be pulled back in by their parents; they all knew what the White Lotus were there for and they felt no need to be part of it.

I bended for them, all three of the elements I had access to and they looked surprised, I beamed at them with pride. They probably confirmed my status as the avatar, but I wasn't paying that much attention, choosing instead to keep showing off my moves with my older brother Kalek looking on. I started paying more attention when the shouting started.

The water I had been circling around my hand dropped uselessly to the floor.

The White Lotus wanted me to leave, to go with them to the North Pole. My parents refused and when the White Lotus people tried to push it, my dad started yelling and my mom told Kalek to take me into the other room with our sisters.

I didn't want to admit it, but I was scared. I hugged close to Kalek and he held me protectively against him. He told me it was going to be fine. I didn't believe him, but maybe I should have, because soon our parents were walking into the room, scooping me up in their arms and telling me the same thing.

The White Lotus people came back a few days later looking upset, this time they were the ones that started shouting. I paid more attention this time, sticking near the doorway in the other room with my siblings.

The White Lotus people kept saying the same things about 'their duty' and 'Avatar Aang', and even _my _duty. My parents kept saying that it was too early; I wasn't even five. The White Lotus said that I wasn't supposed to find out I was the Avatar until I was sixteen, but my parents had seen to that. My parents said that they had no choice; I was already bending three elements. The White Lotus said that it was all the more reason they take me now, the earlier I started training, the better off I'd be.

They said they had to take care of the world, my parents said they had to take care of me.

They were convinced that I didn't need the training yet, and told the White Lotus as much.

In the end, there was nothing they could do without my parent's consent.

Apparently the White Lotus people had to stay in the South Pole if they couldn't convince my parents to let me go with them back to the North Pole. They were forced to set up a permanent residence in the South Pole to keep an eye on me and ensure my safety until the time that I was ready for my training.

The white lotus members stayed in my village for a week, trying every day to change my parents mind and engage them in some form of barter and bargaining.

The villagers were finding it hard not to cross paths with the foreigners who had taken up residence in their home and were becoming increasingly agitated by their presence.

My parents never caved and no agreeable solution was met.

The White Lotus members flat out refused to stay in the village themselves. They chose instead to go build some secret building out in the tundra, away from our roving nomadic tribes. It wouldn't have even mattered if they had agreed considering the uproar the villagers caused when it was suggested that some White Lotus members stay in the village to train me.

The White Lotus Members asked a few questions about the local terrain and left at sunrise the next day. No one watched them go.

The already shaky relationship between me and my village turned sour. The villagers didn't bother to hide their contempt.

Like many of the other nomadic villages in the South Pole, the only thing less popular than outsiders in our village, was the Avatar. The last Avatar almost allowed our entire culture to go extinct and we still weren't recovered from it. Our traditions were in shambles. Our history, mostly told through spoken word, was gone. It was unforgivable.

So really, they weren't too pleased with anything that had to do with me or what I was.

So I made it my personal goal to show them just how good an Avatar could be.

It didn't work. It seemed like the more I tried, the angrier they got and I knew it was making things hard for my parents, but I never stopped trying.

I just couldn't accept it.

Things were rough between the villagers and me, which put a strain between me and my parents, but no matter how badly things were going, I always had Kalek.

Kalek was the golden child in our family. The oldest child, the only boy, and while his bending wasn't particularly strong, what he did know he used well. He was an ace at fishing; my father taught him everything he knew.

Kalek always had time to play with me and teach me water bending moves; even after dad said he'd only teach me in private, even when Dad made me promise not to use what he showed me in public. Kalek didn't even stop when dad started refusing to teach me at all.

Although then we had to keep our lessons from dad _and_ the rest of the village.

I had other family too, and I knew it was wrong, but Kalek was my favorite.

Talaq was the youngest and tended to just repeat what she heard my parents say. That usually meant that if my parents were upset with me or happy with me, so was she. I don't think she even knew what the avatar really was besides our self-proclaimed enemy. Sometimes, when she came home from playing in the village, she'd give me this look and it would make me wonder what the villagers were telling her.

Sekkena was a different situation entirely. She was my older sister, but she seemed to like me even less than the villagers did and sometimes she'd be so mean to me that I would think that she might have hated me. So I tried showing her how good of a sister I could be, but that worked about as well as trying to win over the villagers did.

She was always so angry with me, and then I started getting angry at her. Sometimes we couldn't even be in the same room with each other.

One time I saw her in the village and the other kids were picking on her; they wouldn't let her play with them because she was my sister. It made me think that maybe my parents weren't the only ones I was making things difficult for. When we got home she poured hot soup on my lap and told me to bend it out; I _was_ the Avatar wasn't I?

I didn't feel so bad after that.

Between the continued pressure of the villagers and the White Lotus, my parents seemed to be less and less happy. My dad always looked tired and my mom always looked a bit frayed around the edges. It probably didn't help that I was always getting myself into trouble. But more and more, the thing that was really wearing our family down was the fighting between me and Sekkena. The pressure was mounting in my family and it seemed like my parents were looking even more down trodden with everyday that passed, and as the pressure grew in our family, so did the animosity.

Between Sekkena's need to make my life as hard as possible, the somewhat angry detachment of the villagers, and the guilt over the increasingly weary looks that had taken over my parents faces, I pretty much lived for my time with Kalek.

Shortly after the White Lotus had shown up, my dad started spending less and less time with me, and more and more time teaching Kalek his fishing trade, so I started trying to do more to impress him. I would try my hardest to show my dad how strong I was, but he would always just look away, or I would ask him to teach me something and his face would pinch together like he was in pain before refusing.

My mother would try to make up for it by teaching me how to sew, or showing me how to prepare certain meals, but she had three other children to look after and I didn't care how to mend a shirt or spice meat. I wanted to learn water bending.

I was angry. I knew I was a better water bender than Kalek. I knew I could be a better fisherman. I could be a good hunter if they only gave me the chance. I knew I could be a better water bender than anyone else in the village. I could help them, I could provide for them, but they wouldn't train me.

There was a woman in one of our sister villages and I'd seen her sometimes, when someone got hurt, she'd make the water glow and the hurt go away. So when our villages were trading one day, I asked her to teach me _that_, but she'd looked at me the same way the people from my village did and I knew what the answer was going to be even before she said so.

I begged her, told her I was a good bender, but she wasn't even listening, she just told me to leave again. I wanted to learn so bad, I wanted to use the glowing water to fix my parents, to make them less tired and sad. I wanted to make Sekkena less angry. I wanted to make the hurt go away. So I asked again and again, but she just kept ignoring me, so I told her something I'd sworn to myself never to let anyone outside of my village find out; I was the _Avatar_.

The look she gave me was one I hadn't gotten before, but it was one I wasn't soon to forget, I later learned the word to describe it; Disgust.

"Your _name_" She spat nastily "Means nothing here."

I didn't ask her again.

That was how a few years passed, but then, when I was seven things changed.

No matter what else happened, I'd always had Kalek, he would teach me things when no one else would and play with me when no one else wanted to, but then he started spending time with the daughter of one of the men who fished with our dad, and all the time he didn't spend with her, he spent learning the fishing trade from dad or out at sea. That didn't leave much time for me.

I told him I understood, but I didn't. If Dad could make time for him, and he could make time for the fisher's daughter, why couldn't anyone make time for me? It wasn't fair, and Sekkena took pleasure in pointing it out to me. So I took pleasure in forcefully reminding her how many more elements I could bend then her. I was always the one that got in trouble, and soon my mom stopped trying to teach me how to sew and cook. Sekkena was better at it anyway, and Talaq was already than both of us.

It didn't matter to me, I didn't care about that stuff. So I'd ignored the pang in my chest when I saw Dad teaching Kalek his trade or Mom teaching Sekkena or Talaq some skill. It didn't matter, none of it mattered. I could teach myself.

So I did, I'd practice, practice, practice everything that I already knew, I'd try to combine moves, or make them bigger, faster, and when I got bored with that, I would try to come up with my own. It worked okay, some days went better than others, but no matter what, I made sure to stay out of sight. My dad obviously didn't want me learning how to bend and neither did the villagers.

So I practiced in secret, until one day when Sekkena showed up. I don't think she'd meant to find me because she looked surprised when she saw me. I had been trying to teach myself how to form ice from water for the past week or so and hadn't had any real breakthroughs yet. I'd been able to move already made ice before, but nothing like I could do with water, and I didn't know how to turn water to ice or ice to water, so I was doing my best to figure it out.

When she saw what I was doing, she immediately started taunting me, telling me she was going to go tell Dad what I was doing and that when the villagers found out they'd run me out of town. I knew she was bluffing and I told her so. No matter how much the villagers might not like me, they'd never do that, and if they tried, our parents wouldn't let them.

She gave me a really mean smile.

"Wanna bet?"

And then she started walking away, back toward the village, and I started to panic. What if the villagers _did_ try to kick me out, Dad would be furious if he found out I'd been lying to him about what I'd been doing, what if he got so angry that he let them do it? I couldn't survive out there on my own, I didn't have the skills, I wasn't a good enough bender, and –

-_and I wasn't good enough because no one would teach me!_ Suddenly I was angry, so angry that tears pooled in my eyes and my body shook. It wasn't fair. _It wasn't fair._

"Stop!" I screamed "Come _back_!"

My voice shook almost as much as my body, and there was a rushing in my ears, and she _wasn't stopping_, and-

She laughed.

_She Laughed._

"I said, STOP!"

And I wasn't sure how I did it, but she stopped.

And then I saw her, and I froze, or better yet, _she_ froze.

She was actually frozen, as in, in a block of ice, and I stared at her in shock for a second; did _I_ do that? Then I saw her free arm flailing around and grasping at the ice, and suddenly I felt like I was covered in ice; what did I do!

I ran toward her, trying to figure out how I did it, and how to undo it. I started panicking, I couldn't remember how, I was just so angry!

That was just it; anger.

I reached toward the ice on her face and started trying to focus all my anger and heat into my hands, and sure enough, the ice started melting. Once I got close enough, I was able to just break the ice using my bending and pull it off. She started gasping for breath, her lips were blue, and she had blisters and burns on her neck and face where my hand had gotten too close. I had no idea what to say, I was horrified. She was freezing, literally freezing and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the ice without burning her more. I had to tell dad. He'd be furious, I could practically see the look on his face; the same one the old woman from the other village gave me years ago. For a moment it caused me to reconsider, but when I looked back at Sekkena, I knew I didn't have a choice. I'd done this, it was my fault, and I'd do what I had to do to get her out. So I told her I'd be right back and I ran off to find my dad.

* * *

We got Sekkena home and by the fire to warm up. Mom used some healing salves on her blisters but said they'd still probably scar. Sekkena didn't say a word to me, instead sending me furious looks that made me feel worse than I already did. Mom wouldn't look at me, Talaq looked confused and worried, and what might be worst of all, Kalek looked disappointed. I sat in the corner of our hut, furthest away from the fire, trying to figure out how to apologize to the person who was usually the one terrorizing me. Once Sekkena was being fed and cared for, Dad came over to me and told me to follow him. I did so without question. He lead us out behind our hut, to just outside the village limits. It was about a 10 minute walk, but it felt much longer. I distinctly remember the feelings of guilt and fear about what was to come battling for dominance inside my stomach. I was so focused on it that I didn't notice that my Dad stopped or turned around until I was covered up to my neck in ice.

"What is _wrong_ with you?"

My mouth felt as frozen in place as the rest of me was.

"That's your sister. You did that to _your sister_."

I was silent.

He move closer to me.

"Why?"

I couldn't speak.

He shoved his hand onto the ice around my chest.

"Do you like this? Huh? Do you enjoy this? "

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

"ANSWER ME DAMNIT! Do you think this is _fun_?"

He was so close to my face I could feel flecks of spit hit my skin as he yelled.

I pushed passed the growing lump in my throat, "no." It came out raspy and quiet.

"THEN WHY IN THE SPIRITS DID YOU DO THIS TO YOUR SISTER!"

I felt a dry sob push its way out of my throat, "I didn't mean to!"

He looked taken aback.

"You didn't mean to!?"

"No!"

"You didn't mean to encase your sister in ice."

"_No._"

I couldn't help it, I started crying.

"It was an accident, I was just so _angry_ with her, and then- then it happened!"

He was silent for a while and I tried to stop crying.

When he spoke again, he didn't sound angry, in fact, it sounded like he was talking to himself, so I chanced a look at him and I was right, he didn't look angry anymore. Instead he had that pained pinched look that I hated so much, and he looked tired. So, _so_ tired.

"You…you managed to encase someone entirely in ice…without even meaning to…because 'you got angry'."

I stayed silent and he rubbed the bridge of his nose with the heel of his palm, and when he looked back up, most of the pinched look was gone and his eyes weren't soft anymore.

I didn't realize it then, but looking back on it, I think right then the decision was made.

"I trust you can make it back on your own."

My eyes widened, "What!"

He sighed.

"Consider it training."

Then he walked away.

* * *

I got home that night with a firm understanding of how to change ice to its liquid form without using fire bending. I'd quickly found out that trying to raise the body temperature anywhere but my hands wasn't only beyond my grasp, but it could _hurt_. I couldn't tell because the moon was in its waning phase and it didn't offer enough light, but I thought I might have burned myself a little.

It was late and I was freezing, but, unwilling to have a repeat of my earlier attempt to fire bend, I let myself stay that way. I opened the flap to our hut as quietly as possible, but I stepped inside only to find that my parents were still awake. When they saw me, my dad sagged back into his seat and my mom let out a relieved breath.

Even slouched back into the pile of furs he was sitting on, my dad looked tense.

"Are you alright?"

I thought about mentioning that I might have been burned, but something stopped me.

"Yes."

"Honey, are you sure? You must be cold. We warmed a fur for you."

My mom was pulling an old fur off of the clothesline that was near the fire for drying. She held it out with one hand, an offering. It struck me that she was looking at me for the first time since I came into the tent that morning telling her what I had done. I'd had a great big pit in my stomach all day and when she finally looked at me it felt like it was trying to eat itself some more room. She held the fur out tentatively, with a small smile that wasn't any better than my dad's pinched look.

I felt sick.

I swallowed down the pit that decided that my stomach wasn't room enough and tried to claw its way out of my throat, "No thanks. I'm tired, I'm just gonna go to bed."

My mom sat up quickly, "well here, take this with you then"

I stared at the fur she was holding out to me for a second before accepting it, holding it limply in my hand. It wasn't that hot, but it burned me in a way that made me want to drop it and soak my hands in water.

"Thanks" I choked out half-heartedly.

I couldn't make myself look her in the eyes when I said it.

I slid into my room, letting the door flap fall shut behind me, and wanting more than anything to just go to sleep and end the day, but Talaq's voice stopped me half way to my bedroll.

"Why'd you hurt Sekkena?" It was said quietly, and I looked over to where I knew her bedroll was, not five feet away from mine, but with the door and window flaps shut, it was pitch black. Even then, I could picture her tiny eyes peering over the folds in her furs at me, and the timid way she spoke was so unlike her, that caused me to flinch as the pit started pushing up my throat again.

"'cause." I forced out. My voice was raspier than it was earlier and it came out like a bark.

I heard a small intake of breath and then silence.

Good, I wanted to be left alone.

I ignored the way the pit just sort of hung in my throat, making it hard to breathe.

I went straight to my bedroll and crawled in. I was fast to sleep.

The luke-warm fur lay forgotten on the floor.

* * *

I spent the next few days doing nothing. No training, no bending, nothing.

I avoided everyone, not really wanting to talk, and not wanting to see the look in their eyes.

Kalek found me one day and told me how disappointed he was, how he thought I knew better. I wanted to yell and scream and tell him that is _wasn't fair_, that he didn't understand, but I couldn't get the words out of my throat.

I remember him kneeling in front of me, putting his hands on my shoulders and softly telling me that he was sorry he hadn't been spending as much time with me.

I remember crying and him hugging me, but mostly I remember him telling me that I had to apologize to her.

And it was Kalek, and he was hugging me, and saying he was sorry, and so I promised him I would.

It took me nearly a day to work up the courage to even approach her. When I did, she opened her mouth to say something, probably something nasty, but before she could speak and before I could stop myself, apologies started spilling out of my mouth.

I _had_ felt guilty after all. I hadn't actually wanted to hurt her. She just made me so mad sometimes, but…but I still loved her. She was my sister after all.

To my embarrassment, I told her that.

She just stared at me after I'd finished and then smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile, she never smiled happy smiles at me. I'd never seen her smile happy smiles at all. It was a mean smile, like the one she gave me the other day when everything had gone wrong, and the reminder made me tense.

"You've really done it now you know. You've finally screwed up so bad that Mom and Dad are going to send you away."

This was just like before, she was just messing with me. Lying.

"I heard them talking about it. I told them that I wanted you to go. I told them that you scared me, and I didn't want you around anymore, and they _listened_ to me."

I was breathing heavy even though I hadn't run anywhere, and I didn't understand why she was saying this, why she did these things, we used to get along!

"Sekkena, I said I was sorry-"

"You think that makes it okay! You think that just because you came and apologized that everyone should forgive you, like you're SO special. You come and apologize to me like it will get you off the hook, but guess what Korra, it won't, not this time. This time, Mom and Dad will see you for what you are, a greedy, selfish, _Avatar_!"

She gave me a shove and left.

I didn't bother to chase after her.

I didn't want to believe what she said, but some part of me just couldn't let it go.

* * *

That night, I lay awake on my bedroll, knowing that I should be trying to get some sleep, but instead all I could think about were my parent's mumbles that were drifting into my room from theirs.

My parents used to always wait until we were all in bed before settling in for the night themselves, and every night before they would fall asleep, they would talk to each other about their day. About things that maybe they didn't want to discuss in front of us, things that maybe they'd forgotten to mention earlier.

Honestly, I don't really know what they talked about. I could only just hear their murmurs through the ice and skins that separated our rooms. I fell asleep to it every night.

Their nightly routine was to talk, mine was to listen.

But that night was different. The murmurs weren't comforting. Instead, for the first time, I wanted to know what they were saying.

Finally, when I couldn't take it anymore, I rolled out of my bed roll and stood in my doorway, quietly nudging the leather door flap aside to make room for my head.

My parents doorway was right next to me, so I didn't dare move out any further from behind my door flap. Their voices were a lot clearer.

"-yes, I did see that. Talaq's sewing has gotten better than I could have ever imagined."

I shuffled a bit awkwardly. I'd never heard my Dad talk about me with such an easy pride.

"I didn't even ask her to do it, she just did it all on her own. She said she spent the past two months working on it."

There was silence in the room for a minute. "Senna."

"She said she was going to make another for Sekkena."

A sigh. "Senna."

"She even said she'd make one for Kalek 'even though he's a boy'."

"_Senna._"

There was another silence before my dad started spoke again.

"We have to talk about this-"

"There is _nothing_ to talk about."

I jumped in surprise; I'd never heard my mom sound so fierce.

"Senna, we can't keep ignoring this."

"Ignoring _what_?"

"Korra!"

I felt the pit forming in my stomach again.

"We can't just ignore what she did."

"It was an accident Tonraq."

"An accident? An accident is when you spill a bowl of soup on someone's lap because you're angry. An accident is when you spray someone with a jet of water in surprise. An accident is when you freeze the snow under someone's feet and they fall. Encasing someone almost entirely in a solid block of ice because you're upset is something else entirely."

"She didn't mean to. Every young bender has emotional hiccups like these, isn't that what you told me?"

"That was _before_ this happened, and Korra is not like every young bender."

Another silence.

"Sekkena could have died."

"She didn't mean to." My mom sounded feeble now.

"It doesn't matter whether she meant to or not. She encased Sekkena _entirely_ in ice. I know you don't understand how hard that is, but that's something I couldn't have done until I was nearly twice her age, and that's with training!"

There was a sigh and the hollow thump of a limb hitting fur.

"We both know I'm not a particularly strong bender, but Senna, she's strong. _So_ strong. _Already_."

He didn't say it like it was a good thing.

Another sigh.

"She scares me."

"Tonraq…" My mom's voice was soothing, but my dad cut her off.

"I stopped training her after we realized what she was for exactly this reason! I knew she'd be strong, and I didn't want her hurting someone because she couldn't control her emotions. Just look at what the last avatar did to us without even being there? And we have the next one, sitting like wired explosive powder in the middle of one of the few nomadic villages left in the southern nation. I knew she'd be strong Senna, but I had no idea _how_ strong. The avatar is dangerous."

My dad gave a frustrated grunt.

"If we attempted to train Korra now, we'd destroy the village trying, and that's _if_ we were able to convince the rest of the village that it was a good idea. If we don't train Korra and nothing changes, she'll kill someone one day because she never learned proper control."

"Tonraq please, she's our daughter, we can help her."

"She can't control all that power without training, and we can't control it for her! I thought we could. I thought we could stay together, I thought we could handle it. I was wrong."

"She made one mistake Tonraq, _one_. And yes, it was a big one, but you saw how badly she felt about it! It tore her up. She'll never do something like that again!"

"What if you're wrong? Are you really willing to risk that? To risk Korra feeling like that again? To risk the life of one of the people of this village. What about Sekkena? Would you risk _her_?"

My mom didn't respond.

"You heard what she said. Sekkena is scared of her _little sister_. Sekkena is uncomfortable in her own village. She's uncomfortable in her own house, in her own _bedroll_."

She was still silent.

"Are you really okay with taking that chance?"

"Korra's our daughter too."

She sounded like she was going to cry.

"Yes, she is. But she's also the Avatar, and it's high time we realized that she can't be both."

I was frozen to my spot-at some point I'd slid down onto the floor-listening as my mom collapsed into sobs while my father talked about contacting the White Lotus in a week. About talking to me first. About explaining it to me.

But I understood all too well.

I listened to my mom's cries quiet and listened to her softly agree. One week.

I listened to them say goodnight to each other.

I listened to them kiss.

I listened to them fall asleep.

I didn't move until I started to feel the sunrise in my bones.

I put on my parka and my boots. I put my hair ties in and rolled my extra set of clothes together before tying them off with two well used strips of leather. I remember playing with them while I waited for my parents to wake up.

I heard some of the dishes clanking as my mom started cooking breakfast, and when my dad poked his head in, looking surprised that I was up and asking me to come out of my room to talk, I quietly got off my fully made bedroll and joined them.

With breakfast cooking, my parents sat down with me, and with a deep breath and a hand held tightly in my mom's, my dad spoke.

"Korra, your mother and I have been talking and-"

"I want you to take me to the White Lotus."

He gaped at me and my mom looked like she'd just been slapped.

For whatever reason, that made me angry.

"Well," My dad said once he finally got his mouth working, "why don't we talk to the guards in a week-"

"Now. I want to talk to them _now_."

"Okay." My dad said in a breath.

"Korra…Where exactly is this coming from?"

My mom looked sick while she asked me.

It all just made me angrier. Why were they surprised, this is what they wanted!

"It's _MY _choice and I want to go _now_."

My parents seemed at a loss, but they brought me to a White Lotus guard anyway.

This was exactly what they'd wanted after all.

* * *

It took nearly three days for the White Lotus members to get to my village from wherever they were holed up.

Three days of pained, uncertain looks from my parents.

Three days of answering why's for Talaq and Kalek.

Three days of a smug Sekkena and a nearly joyous village.

Then they were here and it was like I hadn't had enough time at all.

Talaq gave me an arm wrap that she'd sewn herself. It really was amazingly well done for someone her age. She'd said she'd wanted to give it to me for my birthday, but that Mom had told her to give it to me now. She didn't seem to understand why.

Kalek hugged me close to him and told me in a thick voice that he loved me and he always would. I started crying then.

I remember praying to the spirits that I'd see him again soon.

Sekkena was smiling. It wasn't a mean smile, or nasty, it wasn't even smug. She was standing off to the side, not bothering to pretend that she wanted to say goodbye to me, and she looked happy. It struck me that I'd never seen her look truly happy before, it transformed her. She looked beautiful.

I felt some weird misplaced sense of pride that I put that look on her face, and I nearly choked on the feeling.

My mom cried and hugged me and didn't seem to want to let go. My dad had that pained pinched look on his face while he clamped a hand on the shoulder that didn't have my mom's face buried into it.

The villagers gathered outside their homes and watched as the White Lotus members and their sentries lead me out of the village. I knew that they hadn't bothered to watch when the White Lotus had left the first time and it made me feel warm that they did now. I'd never felt so accepted by them.

* * *

It was nearly two years later the next time I heard something about my family.

Apparently, when they were still stationed there, one of the White Lotus sentries had fallen for one of the women of my village, but she'd said she couldn't be with him if he was part of the White Lotus. So when we'd left, he stayed behind, but he kept in touch with one of the guards still with me at the compound, and one day that guard had a message for me.

There had been a storm. One of the strong and sudden ones that were so common to summers in the South Pole. It appeared without warning, and disappeared just as suddenly.

The day after, our family's fishing boat was found capsized and knocking against the shores where one of our sister villages had taken up residency for the summer. The people of the village assured my parents that with the boat having been close enough to land to have washed ashore, a strong bender could have survived.

Kalek never was much of a bender.

His body washed up a couple days later.

I thanked Tui & La that there was a body at all.

The souls of the southern water tribe could only be put to rest under the light of the full moon. The first full moon since the storm was tomorrow night.

The original White Lotus members who brought me to the compound had left long ago, transferring out when they were told they'd have to stay in the already fortified compound in the South Pole to train me. I didn't like the people who replaced them any better.

They were mean and I was pretty sure they wouldn't let me leave the compound without them. I wouldn't let White Lotus members crash my brother's funeral either, which left me one option.

That night I put on my warmest pants, pulled on my parka, and tucked a loaf of bread from the kitchens into my shirt before letting myself tumble down the south wall into the large pile of snow I'd bent to catch my fall. I knew where my village's preferred place along the shore was and I wasn't going to be late for my brother's funeral.

By the time I reached my village, it was nightfall, but the pyres were never lit until the moon was highest in the sky, so I had a few more hours to wait. I was so close to my house, but I couldn't imagine going there, something stopped me, and whatever it was, I didn't argue with it. I wondered down towards where I saw the pyre being built, it was a few hundred yards away from the village, so I found a good place a safe distance away, bended some snow up to create some cover, and waited for the moon to rise above me.

* * *

When the body was placed, and the pyre lit, all I could think was that I could have lit it much faster.

Once the whole thing was engulfed, people began to wander back to their homes until there were only a few left. The combination of moonlight and firelight was just enough to identify the girl that Kalek had been dating, standing separate from my family. She kept rubbing her stomach. I tried not to pay too much attention to my family, focusing instead on the girl and the flames that consumed my brother's earthly form. The girl and my family left once the pyre had finished burning, each of them scooping up some of the ashes to drop into the sea. I waited there in silence with the embers for a few minutes, only making my way towards the burnt out pyre and scooping up a handful of my own when I thought I would get the ocean to myself.

I was wrong.

When I got to the ocean's edge, Kalek's girlfriend was still staring out at the water, but by the time I noticed her, it seems she had noticed me too; it was too late to turn back.

She turned wordlessly to look at who had disturbed her peace and stared at me for a moment before turning back to the ocean. Taking her silence at my intrusion to mean that she didn't mind my presence, I moved to the water's edge.

I held my fist full of ash in front of me and I was reminded of a time when I was six and my mom asked me to help her cook; she put me in charge of the spices. "I said just a Pinch Korra!" I could practically hear her laughter.

I lowered my hand to the water and it met me half way, consuming my hand; caressing it, and when I straightened back up, there wasn't a trace of ash left on my hand. I stared passed my hand at the water, the water that I felt such a connection to, the water that swallowed Kalek whole and spit him back out, only for us to walk here and put him back in; this water that rose up to meet me.

I looked up to see Kalek's girlfriend staring at my hand and I couldn't help but notice that hers, while no longer clutching any ash, was still black with its remains. I almost tried to command the ocean to reach up and clean it off, but just as I'd thought about it, her hand drew back and as she placed it on her stomach. I frowned, there it was again, that gesture, but it tickled something in my memory; a memory of my mom smiling and telling me that I was going to be an older sister.

"Are you pregnant?" it was out of my mouth before I could stop it but she just closed her eyes and didn't say anything for a moment.

"Yes."

It's spoken so softly that the wind pulled it from her lips and carried it out to sea with Kalek. And like Kalek it must have come back because I somehow still heard her. So I said what I'd heard my mom say to other women in the village when she found out that they were pregnant: "Congratulations."

I must not have said the right thing because that soot covered hand that was placed flat on her stomach was suddenly digging into her parka and she was crying. Crying big fat tears that leave ugly red streaks when the freezing wind hit her newly wetted skin. She was crying and I was freaking out because I'd only ever seen babies cry, or other kids when they got hurt, but I'd always thought that that made them babies too. I had no idea what to say to a crying adult, I had no idea what to say at all, and I thought that right then, that was better then whatever I might've thought to say because so far every time I opened my mouth she got more upset.

For a second I thought that maybe she just didn't like me, maybe she didn't like the fact that I was the avatar, like the other villagers, like Sekkena, like my dad. Maybe she didn't like the fact that _I_ wasthe avatar, like with the white lotus people. Maybe she was afraid that her baby was going to be like me, but that's silly because even I knew that there could be only be one avatar.

So I said the only thing I could think of that couldn't make the situation worse.

"Sorry."

I said it because it was true, I was, even if I couldn't quite explain what for.

And that was the right thing to say, because she stopped crying (or at least slowed down) and then she turned to me and with her still blackened hand, used the flat of the back of her finger to trace the line of my cheek bones with two deft strokes. She finished the ceremonial war paint with a thumb down the bridge of my nose, leaving ash in its wake.

"You'll make a good avatar." She said. Then she was gone.


End file.
